


4AM Knows All My Secrets

by crumplelush



Series: Andreil Week 2019 [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 22:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19733239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumplelush/pseuds/crumplelush
Summary: Neil is struggling to cope without Andrew.





	4AM Knows All My Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2: fluorescent lights | deafening sound | **secrets**

Insomnia is an old friend that lays a suffocating blanket over the world. Lying in bed at that perilous time when night and day flirt with each other, Neil stares at the slats of the bunk above him, and listens to his teammates’ snores. Teammates, not family. Not these Foxes.

The weather is stifling, the air conditioning of Fox Tower as lethargic as its occupants. Neil is wearing as little as he can stomach to be seen in, and the covers are bunched up at the foot of the bed. He can’t sleep without their comforting weight, but he can’t sleep with their oppressive heat either. He rolls onto his side and tries to think back to last year, when Andrew was here in this bed with him. When they’d trade kisses in the dark and Andrew would kiss bruises into his skin. He’d moved down to Andrew’s bunk when the cousins left last year, his old bunk being taken by a new teammate whose name Neil doesn’t care to remember.

Sleep is not happening. The stars aren’t aligned. Neil is feeling itchy, like his skin to too small, too tight around his frame. Like it’s another part of him that was created in a hurry and doesn’t fit right. He climbs out of bed and grabs his keys and cigarettes before climbing to the roof. He sits on the edge, his feet dangling over the side, as he lights a cigarette. Andrew isn’t to be found up here either. It’s like all traces of him have been erased, Neil can’t feel him anywhere. Andrew would never have allowed him to sit like this. So close to the edge. He would have told him to move and complained about the likelihood of Neil falling.

The cigarette isn’t helping and so Neil holds his hand out and lets it fall from the building. He watches it tumble to the ground, the cherry glowing red as it falls to the sidewalk below. Neil feels hemmed in. He feels trapped, here in this gilded cage of his own making. He doesn’t want to escape it. At least not permanently. But he’d like to be able to leave it on occasion.

He could go for a run. A part of him, a rather large part of him, yearns to do just that. Run and run and run until he can’t feel his lungs anymore. Until he can’t feel anymore. But he knows that running won’t help. Won’t solve the problem. The problem is Andrew.

Or rather, the problem is the lack of Andrew. Neil can’t do it. He can’t live without him. In the last four years they’ve done everything together: ate, slept, played, studied, worked. Lived. Andrew is the axis around which Neil orbits. And now he’s not here, and Neil doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He wanders downstairs back to his dorm. Neil isn’t going to find Andrew here. He just needs to be patient. Neil has never been any good at patience. He reaches the door to his dorm and reaches for the handle, then pauses. He can’t do it. He can’t go in, to the room he shared with Andrew and pretend to be fine. He’s spent the last four years being a real boy, he can’t pretend to be a lie anymore.

He lets go of the door and turns back to the stairs, this time heading down instead of up. He doesn’t have a plan, he’s not thinking at all. Nothing beyond _I can’t be here I need Andrew_. He gets downstairs and outside and it’s only when he steps on his discarded cigarette from earlier that he realises he’s barefoot _. Oh well_ , he thinks. The walk back up to his dorm doesn’t seem worth it.

He walks past the rows of cars until he reaches the Audi that Andrew bought him with the advance on his wages. Since he needed a way to get around and the last of Neil’s money disappeared on Andrews Maserati and the Foxes group trip to the beach.

Neil looks down at his hands. He’s still holding the mangled cigarette package from earlier, and his keys. His car key is on the keyring. Without thinking about it he presses the fob and gets in. The car starts up as quietly as usual, and the dashboard clock informs him that it’s currently 5am. He pulls out of the parking lot and gets onto the freeway, winding the window down and letting the wind blow through his hair. Already he feels much better. The thin T-shirt that he wears to bed flaps around his body, and Neil smiles to himself as he lights another cigarette and points the car towards Atlanta.

He arrives at 9.30am, when Andrew’s team practice would be well underway. Not that it matters. Neil has a key to Andrew’s apartment on his keyring and he can let himself in and shower off, then have a quick nap before Andrew gets home.

That plan goes out of the window the second Neil enters the apartment and hears Andrew’s irate voice talking to someone on a phone. He’s not shouting, because Andrew never shouts, but he’s clearly irritated with whoever it is. “No, I don’t care. You call me the second you hear anything. I trusted you and look where that has gotten me” he says, tone clipped.

Neil rounds the corner into the living room, where Andrew’s back is to him. Andrew is clearly tense, his posture radiating anger from every pore. “What happened?” Neil asks, and Andrew whirls around, his eyes wide as he rakes them over Neil as if searching for something.

“Never mind, he’s here. I’ll call you back” Andrew says, and hangs up on the retort. Before Neil can question it Andrew is across the room and has Neil’s shirt in his fist and Neil’s back to the wall.

“You. Where were you?” he demands.

“What are you talking about?” Neil is confused.

“I woke up to a phone call that you’d gone missing. Wymack has been calling everyone. Your phone wasn’t picking up. Where. Were. You?” Andrew all but growls out.

Neil feels stupid. He’d left his phone in the dorm when he’d gone to the roof, and hadn’t thought to go back for it. He hadn’t even bothered to leave a note for his team to tell them he was skipping practice. He was such a fool.

Inexplicably he begins to cry. It’s suddenly all too much and he’s overwhelmed. There’s no point in saying sorry, not to Andrew who hates that word almost as much as the P word, but he can’t stand it. Once again he’s hurt his family, his Andrew, let his teammates down. He was useless and the more he tried the more he kept fucking things up.

He sobs as this out between gulps of air as Andrew’s face quickly changes from annoyed to concerned. He grabs the back of Neil’s neck in one hand and wrapped the other around him as he lets Neil cry out his anguish on him.

“You are not useless Neil”, he says firmly once Neil has finished blubbering.

Neil just gulps down another breath of air, unable to speak, but finally able to breathe now he’s with Andrew.

“You are having a hard time adjusting. You’re used to having your family around you. Now that’s been taken away and you’re on your own again, having to not only work on finishing your degree, but attempt to captain your team to victory. Anyone would be strained. You’re not a failure for breaking. Anyone who says so is an idiot.”

Neil managed to get enough breath back to murmur “I’m the only one who has said so.”

“Like I said, an idiot” Andrew retorts. The familiar insult worms it’s way into Neil’s heart and makes him huff out a weak laugh.

To anyone else Andrew would look angry. His eyebrows are drawn together, his mouth turned down in a frown, his shoulders tense. But Neil can read Andrew as if he were screaming his emotions to the whole world. Everything about Andrew now is screaming concern. Neil feels bad for making him worry. He wonders how long Andrew had been up and thinking Neil was missing before he walked in. He doesn’t ever want Andrew to feel that way.

“I promise I won’t ever make you worried again Andrew” he says, eyes bright with sincerity.

Andrew rolls his eyes and makes the small chuffing noise that is his equivalent of a full belly laugh. “I’ve told you before. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, junkie.”

And like that the heavy blanket that had been laying over Neil for weeks slips down and he feels like he can breathe freely once more. Andrew notices the change come over him and overs him into the shower, calling Wymack to explain things as Neil rinses the grime of the last few hours off of him. Neil takes his time. Andrew has a waterfall shower and very high water pressure and it feels like heaven as the water pummels him into submission. His feet are sore, driving barefoot for hours is not the best idea that Neil has ever had. Still, the water helps.

Andrew comes in without knocking, dumping a pair of sweatpants and T-shirt on the side and picking up Neil’s discarded shorts and T-shirt to stick in the wash. “Just making sure you haven’t drowned in here. I wouldn’t put it past you, and it’d be typical of you to die moments after I’ve finished calling everyone to tell them you’re alive.”

Neil sticks up his middle finger, too tired to bother thinking of a reply. He gets one in return from Andrew, and turned off the shower to dry off and get dressed as Andrew wanders out of the room. Neil is exhausted. He heads straight for the bedroom, the one that isn’t his yet, but Andrew has said will be one day, and climbs into bed as Andrew pulls the curtains. He’s surprised by Andrew shutting the door with himself this side of it, and tells Andrew he doesn’t have to stay and gets told to fuck off in no uncertain terms.

Andrew positions them so Neil is curled into his chest, Andrews nose in Neil’s still damp hair. It’s quiet. Neil closes his eyes and prepares to let sleep finally come.

“I thought I had lost you again. And this time I wouldn’t be lucky enough to get you back” Andrew confesses quietly in the dark of the room.

Neil’s eyes fly open. He leans up and looks at Andrew, who isn’t avoiding his eyes. He’s looking directly at Neil. Stubborn and open and honest and defiant and scared.

“I can’t promise that nothing will ever happen to me, but I can promise you this. As long as I have the choice, I will always choose to come back to you Andrew. I will fight and fight and run until I reach you. I choose you Andrew. Always. I’m lost without you.”

Andrew dismisses his words with a scoff and eye roll, but Neil can tell his words have hit their mark as he curls back up on Andrew’s chest.

Later Andrew will talk to Neil about mental health. Later Andrew will talk to Neil about depression and anxiety and stress and disassociation. Later Andrew will convince Neil to talk to someone. Later they will work through it. But for this moment, for now, Neil is in Andrew’s arms. And the world has shifted back into place.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't drive barefoot kiddos. In fact, don't do anything that Neil does. Boy is a walking warning label for bad practices.


End file.
